What Americans could pay now — and how Trump says it’ll bring billions back later
With new wide-ranging and aggressive tariffs from the Trump administration and the possibility of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expiring at the end of the year, average Americans could face a hefty price tag.
“If the tax cuts expire, the median family would lose about $1,000,” nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) Kimberly Clausing told Fox News Digital, citing a model from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
And if the recently unveiled tariffs continue, “that would generate an average per household consumer loss of $3,800,” she added, pointing to the Yale Budget Lab’s estimate.
This, she said, would be “far more damaging to Americans’ pocketbooks than the tax cut expiration.”
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“Tariffs are also more damaging to the efficiency of our economy as well as our relations with allies and partners abroad,” Clausing continued.
It comes as House and Senate Republicans navigate their slim majorities in Congress to pass a massive bill advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda by the end of this year, via the budget reconciliation process. GOP leaders hope to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in the legislation, in addition to policy overhauls on energy and border security.
On April 2, dubbed “Liberation Day” by Trump, he announced a baseline duty of 10% on all imports to the U.S., with customized tariffs set for countries with higher tariffs in place on American goods. The 10% tariffs began on Saturday, and others will start on April 9.
Some examples of the customized tariffs assigned to specific countries are 34% (not including previous 20% tariffs) on China, 20% on the European Union, 25% on South Korea and 26% on India, among many others.
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Claude Barfield, a former consultant to the office of the U.S. trade representative and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the tariffs with Fox News Digital, explaining, “Some people think that certainly it will raise prices in some areas, but there’s a difference in raising prices and having a full inflationary effect.”
“That doesn’t mean… that you won’t notice it or a consumer won’t notice,” he added.
Tax Foundation’s Garrett Watson said one big risk of the new tariffs is that they could offset “much or all the benefits of extending the expiring TCJA provisions.”
“In our October 2024 analysis, for example, a hypothetical set of tariffs of a similar size as the combined tariffs enacted so far nearly wiped out the benefits of the tax cut extensions,” he explained.
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The GOP-led House Committee on Ways and Means released a memo in recent months arguing that average taxpayers would pay 22% more if the 2017 tax cuts were left to expire. “A family of four making $80,610, the median income in the United States, would see a $1,695 tax increase if the Trump tax cuts expire,” the committee release said.
“This is worth about nine weeks of groceries to a typical family of four across the country,” it added.
Daniel Bunn of the Tax Foundation said, “In short, families across the country will continue to face higher costs if lawmakers in Washington don’t focus their efforts on pro-growth and fiscally responsible economic policies.”
Both House and Senate Republican leaders have emphasized that they do not want to let Trump’s tax cuts expire, and are so far optimistic that they will not.
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The effect their expiration would have on Americans was emphasized, however, by President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) Grover Norquist in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“It’d be a real shock per family, per person to see in real life, times thousands of dollars,” he said.
But what’s more is that the expired cuts, effectively an increase in taxes, “would transfer hundreds of billions that was flowing into corporate investment and jobs and new investment, and that would go straight to the government instead,” he explained.
Norquist expressed confidence in congressional Republicans’ ability to get the tax cuts extended, however. “I believe we are close,” he said.
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“I think it is as certain as anything is in the world in politics. It is extremely likely that we’re all set.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the White House did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication.
FBI chief’s warning as concerning situation emerges at America-Canada border
A “quiet crisis” is emerging at the U.S.-Canada border, as one expert proposes an unconventional solution to fight human smuggling: leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.
While national attention is largely fixed on the southern border, an increasingly concerning situation is unfolding along the country’s northern border, said Jon Brewton, the founder and CEO of Data2 and a U.S. Air Force Veteran.
“U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has seen a fairly alarming increase in illegal crossings, drug trafficking, and even encountering individuals on the terrorist watch list,” he told Fox News Digital. “And as difficult as securing the southern border has been, the northern border is twice as long.”
While the vast majority of illegal crossings happen at the southern border, officials have been warning for years that the northern line has seen an increase.
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By the numbers
During testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee, FBI Director Kash Patel told lawmakers last week adversaries such as China and Russia have started to target the northern U.S. border with Canada.
“The enemy adapts,” Patel said.
The Trump administration has overseen a dramatic shift at the U.S. southern border since taking office in January, with the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded encounters plummeting by 90% in most sectors compared to the same time period last year. The administration has poured in resources to stop the spiraling immigration situation at the southern border.
The sudden silence there came after record-setting numbers of illegal crossings during the four years of the Biden administration, a trend that also saw a dramatic increase in attempted crossings by immigrants outside of North and Latin America.
Chinese nationals were among the most likely to attempt illegal crossings, with the number of crossings from citizens of the country rising to over 24,000 in 2023, a more than 5,200% increase from the 450 encounters just a year earlier, according to CBP data.
Overall, Patel told lawmakers that between 2022 and 2025, roughly 178,000 Chinese nationals attempted to cross the southern border.
CBP’s Swanton Sector, which spans 295 miles of the border with Canada and covers all of Vermont and parts of upstate New York and New Hampshire, has seen more apprehensions in the last fiscal year than the previous 13 years combined.
According to a report on CBS 19, the sector has seen 15,000 apprehensions in the 10 months of fiscal year 2024, the largest volume ever recorded by the sector, over 14,000 more than was recorded in fiscal year 2024.
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The report noted that migrants from 85 different countries have attempted to illegally cross in the area.
How technology and AI can aid border security
Brewton said that there are unconventional ways that technology can be used to secure the 5,525 miles of border between the U.S. and Canada.
“And so there are some non-traditional ways that we can use technology as a capability multiplier,” he said. “That’s just something a little bit different than just hiring more agents and building physical processes in what is a really substantial amount of land that is rocky in territory, cold and snowy and hard to manage.”
“I think that is where AI can help change our trajectory and success on the northern border.”
Brewton explained that AI could play a powerful role in border security – enhancing surveillance, radar systems, and open-source intelligence, while also helping agents monitor water crossings more effectively.
“And using radar systems to understand the full scope of intelligence that’s at our disposal, but using really, really smart tools to combine that intelligence in a smart way and use it at scale,” he said.
Traditional security systems operate in silos – each collects and processes data separately – but using AI models could give a full, connected picture, he explained.
People often misunderstand border security as just invasive surveillance, Brewton said, but when done right – especially with well-designed AI – it can actually improve both security and privacy by being smarter and more targeted.
“A lot of people really assume border security primarily means privacy, invasive surveillance, like facial recognition and biometrics and the roles that they can play within sort of pattern recognition. It’s really about identifying suspicious behaviors and connecting different pieces of intelligence to individuals that we’re monitoring,” he said.
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Brewton emphasized that citizens should have both strong safety measures and strong protection of their rights.
“Well-designed AI delivers enhanced protections for Americans and our communities while maintaining the transparency and accountability that our citizens, and quite frankly, our government, require,” he said. “So if we’re smart about what we do, we can make really, really impactful changes to what we’re doing on the northern border and the southern border.”
Canada’s role in border security
The Trump administration has pressured Canada to enhance its border security to stop the upward trend of the flow of migrants and fentanyl by implementing 25% tariffs on imports from Canada. Energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10% tariff.
“I know that the president’s agenda has really been to try to understand how we can work with Canada and seek concessions from our neighbors to the north to help secure the border in both directions,” he said. “The government really needs to use all of its tools at its disposal.”
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Fox News Digital has reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for comment.
Legacy media outlets called out after another scandal appears on their radar years too late
Legacy media and longtime politics reporters are increasingly reporting on scandals that rocked the Democratic Party ahead of the November election, shining additional light on political issues that Republicans had long spotlighted and railed against.
“A full after The Post’s bombshell series on Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling schemes, The New York Times has deigned to take an interest in the former First Son’s corruption,” the New York Post’s editorial board wrote in a piece last week slamming the New York Times for reporting on Biden corruption allegations years after other outlets had already uncovered reported details.
“We’d say the Times’ willingness to at long last cover this comes better late than never, but it only published the story now that it the editorial board continued.
The New York Times declared in an article published on Friday that former first son Hunter Biden “sought support from the State Department” to aid his former employer, Ukrainian energy company Burisma, while his father served as vice president. Hunter Biden allegedly leveraging his last name and father’s political status in the U.S. has long been criticized by conservatives, who have alleged that Hunter and his father engaged in influence-peddling through Burisma.
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Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars while serving on the board of Burisma after joining the company as legal counsel in the spring of 2014 before being elevated to the Board of Directors later that year.
The Bidens were accused by Republicans of having “coerced” the Burisma CEO into paying them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired during the Obama administration.
The 46th president denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings.
Biden issued his son a sweeping 10-year pardon before exiting the Oval Office in January that protects Hunter Biden from offenses he “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. Alleged Biden family influence-peddling has echoed from the halls of Congress to social media channels on X, but legacy outlets and left-wing media outlets often didn’t give a platform to the allegations.
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Jonathan Turley, Fox News’ contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, published an op-ed for Fox News Digital on Sunday remarking on the NYT’s piece that was published years after other outlets and experts investigated alleged Biden family influence-peddling.
“For years, some of us have written about the Biden family’s multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation and the Justice Department’s refusal to charge Hunter Biden with being an unregistered foreign agent. Now, years later, The New York Times has found evidence suggesting that the former president’s son was acting as a foreign agent as early as the Obama administration, when his father was vice president,” Turley wrote.
Media veterans and legacy outlets have leaned into reporting on and investigating a handful of other scandals and political news that conservatives had long sounded the alarm on, including that the coronavirus likely originated out of a lab in China, as well as on President Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the election last year.
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The New York Times ran a column last month claiming the scientific community “badly misled” the public in an effort to suppress the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, even after the paper’s own science writer called the theory “racist.”
“We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives,” the March 16 piece published by NYT columnist and Princeton sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci, argued that the scientific community long suspected COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab, but purposefully “hid or understated crucial facts,” to mislead the public about the lab’s “terrifyingly lax” safety precautions.
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“We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story,” Tufekci wrote.
The Trump administration’s CIA reported earlier this year that the lab leak was the likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, which had previously been passed off by media outlets and scientists as a likely conspiracy theory.
The New York Times defended that it had reported on the lab leak theory multiple times across the years, including in 2021, when approached for comment by Fox News Digital on the recent articles on both Hunter Biden and the lab leak theory.
“The New York Times has intensely pursued every theory and lead on the origins of Covid-19, documented the political debate, funding, influence, and shifts in thinking among the scientific community, and reported on China’s censorship campaign that has stifled the search for truth. The Times has helped readers navigate the coronavirus pandemic through independent, verified reporting, and any insinuation that we have not thoroughly pursued leads is false,” a NYT spokesperson said.
And a newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” investigates Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a “shell of himself.”
“All of them,” Parnes told Vanity Fair of who in Biden’s inner circle is most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office. “It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off. He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours.”
“We’d been watching Biden’s decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020. And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought,” Allen added of Biden’s mental decline.
Biden’s mental acuity had been under conservatives’ microscope since before the 2020 election, with concerns heightening in February 2024 when Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as vice president, announced he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, calling Biden “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
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The report renewed scrutiny over Biden’s mental fitness, which rose to a fever pitch in June 2024 after the president’s first and only presidential debate against Trump. Biden’s debate performance was seen as an abject failure, with traditional allies soon joining conservatives in their concern over the president’s health in the context of encouraging Biden to pass the mantle to a younger generation of U.S. leaders.
Biden dropped out of the race in July, and shortly thereafter endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential candidate. Harris ultimately failed to rally enough support to defeat Trump at the polls in November.
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Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor and longtime Trump critic, has also touted his upcoming book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” which is also anticipated to detail Biden’s mental decline and the alleged cover-up by members of the Democratic Party.
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s post-presidential office but did not immediately receive a reply.
Americans share what they really think of Trump’s DOGE in first 100 days
Americans across the country shared mixed reviews of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by Elon Musk, in interviews with Fox News Digital conducted last month.
DOGE was created in an effort to slash government waste and provide additional transparency in government spending to the American people. Fox News Digital conducted interviews in Knoxville, Tenn., Washington D.C., Detroit, Mich., and Houston, Texas, where citizens provided reactions and graded its ongoing efforts.
The progress report from Americans on the DOGE efforts ranged from A to F.
Micah in D.C. gave DOGE an “F,” while Matt in Tennessee gave it a more positive rating of a “B”. Kyle, also in Tennessee, gave the department a “D.”
Darryl in Houston said he is “encouraged” by the efforts by Elon Musk and DOGE. On the contrary, Ruben in Detroit said he feels “definitely discouraged.”
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Art in the nation’s capital did not spare any feelings for DOGE.
“Very, very poor. I think that they’re trying to do their job with a sledgehammer,” he said.
Micah elaborated on his F rating, saying, “They have come in, and they have wholesale damaged our nation’s system of government.”
Candice in Detroit expressed optimism about DOGE.
“I think it’s fantastic. There’s a lot of corruption in the way some of our money is spent in the government, and it’s been going on for decades,” she said. “Even Obama started in 2011 looking into government waste and I think they ended up getting like a list of things but no one ever did anything about it.”
According to the Obama White House archives, on June 13, 2011, former President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order to establish the “Campaign to Cut Government Waste.” This included two initiatives, “New Oversight and Accountability Board,” and “Regular Cabinet Meetings to Report Progress to the Vice President.”
In a recently resurfaced video from 2011, then-President Obama called on the federal government to cut wasteful government spending and programs, even the ones that “a lot of people care about.”
“Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit will require some tough decisions, and that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about,” the former president said in the nearly 14-year-old clip.
Richard in Houston described DOGE as “theworst thing to ever happen to our country.”
Anthony in Houston said about the efforts that he believes “maybe the intent is good,” but said the way they are going about it leaves something to be desired.
Jessica in Detroit said, “I think it’s disgusting, it’s inhumane.”
Kyle in Tennessee expressed thoughts that DOGE is likely cutting a lot of “unnecessary” things in the U.S. government.
“Trump is getting people laid off of work. He got Elon Musk up in there, I don’t believe Elon knows what he doing,” said Dalrimple in Detroit.
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As of March 27, DOGE claims on its site it has saved Americans $130 billion, or $807.45 per taxpayer.
President Donald Trump tasked the organization with optimizing the federal government, streamlining operations and slashing spending and gave the agency 18 months to do it.
The department has canceled numerous diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at federal agencies, consulting contracts, leases for underused federal buildings and duplicate agencies and programs.
Most think the national debt is a crisis or major problem, and nearly 6 in 10 feel a great deal or almost all of government spending is ‘wasteful and inefficient,’ according to a new Fox News national survey.
Yet a slim 51% majority opposes substantially shrinking the number of government employees, some 56% disapprove of the job the Trump administration is doing identifying and reducing wasteful spending, and another 65% worry that not enough thought and planning has gone into the cuts.
A sizable minority of Republicans (39%) share the concern of large numbers of Democrats (88%) and Independents (71%) about how the reductions are being implemented.
Forty percent approve of the job Elon Musk is doing working with DOGE, while 58% disapprove. Fully 93% of Democrats disapprove, along with 70% of Independents and 20% of Republicans.
U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced on Monday that her department will return over $1 billion in unused COVID-era funding back to the taxpayer amid the Trump administration’s push for the DOGE to slash waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
In a press release, the Labor Department said $1.4 billion of unspent COVID funding will be “returned to taxpayers through the U.S. Department of Treasury’s General Fund” and added that “action” is “being taken to recover the remaining $2.9 billion.”
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Illegal alien brags to ICE she’s ‘queer,’ ‘unafraid’ — but the internet isn’t having it
An undocumented immigrant attending an anti-Trump “Hands Off!” rally on Saturday said she was “unafraid” to flash her immigration status and sexual orientation publicly.
“I am an immigrant, I am undocumented, unafraid, queer and unashamed,” Greisa Martinez Rosas, a longtime left-wing immigration activist, told those in attendance at the Washington, D.C., demonstrations over the weekend, according to a report in the New York Post.
The comments come as protests against the Trump administration’s immigration and cost-cutting policies have spread across the country in recent days, with critics slamming the president for his push to hasten deportations and gut federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency.
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Rosas is originally from Hidalgo, Mexico, but came to the U.S. as a child, the report notes, where she eventually grew up in the Dallas area. She has since gone on to serve as the executive director of United We Dream, a network of more than 400,000 young immigrants.
Her comments were made in front of tens of thousands of protesters who attended the rally in the nation’s capital, one of more than 1,000 protests held around the country on Saturday.
The report notes that Rosas’ comments quickly went viral on social media, where not all users were enthusiastic about her message.
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“Deport her. Now,” one user on X said, according to the Post.
“Lock her up,” another said.
Others quipped that her public declaration was likely to land her on the radar of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
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“The only thing she didn’t tell ICE is her home address,” one X user said. “I’m confident they can look that up.”
“I guess we will see her arrested later this week, thanks for coming forward to let ICE know where you are,” added another.
NBA legend trashes league’s product, says star player ‘needs to be f—ing arrested’
Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal had tough words for Los Angeles Clippers guard Ben Simmons in a rant against the NBA’s current product.
O’Neal sounded off on the game in the latest episode of the podcast.
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“People get mad. It’s just a product of what I’ve seen,” the Los Angeles Lakers legend said. “I’ve seen what greatness is, been there, played with them. I don’t see that all the time over there. So, you want me to give these mother—-rs the same props you giving them? That s— will never happen. You can call it hate if you want.
“Even with the word ‘hate,’ like these f—–g kids, they like to throw that word around. If you ain’t f—–g great and I’m great, how the f— can I hate on you? That don’t make no f—–g sense. I’m in the f—–g building, and you not in the building, so how the f— can I hate on you?”
O’Neal said he wants to see greatness on the court and lamented that “a lot of these mother—ers can’t play.”
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He pointed to Simmons, a three-time All-Star whose career has been marred by injuries. He went from averaging 14.3 points per game with the Philadelphia 76ers to averaging fewer than seven points per game with the Brooklyn Nets and now with the Clippers. All of that while he averaged around $35.4 million per year in salary and has earned more than $200 million in his career.
“Ben f—ing Simmons, that mother—er needs to be arrested. Jayson Tatum can play. He’s alright. I’m not going to bash him. But Ben Simmons needs to be f—–g arrested. ($250 million) for that bull—- Get the f— out of my face. Robbing people, man. You can’t do that.”
The NBA’s current product has found a lot of criticism over the last few years. With more teams taking 3-pointers and stars not playing the entirety of the 82-game schedule, fans responded by turning the game off.
Ratings were a hot topic of conversation earlier in the season.
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla even said he’d “rather watch something else.”
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The NBA playoffs are poised to change that with superstar talent in the running for a title, including the Lakers and LeBron James.
Experts left baffled by discovery ‘preserved quite well’ in ancient settlement
Archaeologists recently uncovered the remains of a remarkably well-preserved dog from ancient Rome – and the discovery highlights the prevalence of ritual sacrifice in antiquity.
The excavation findings were announced by SOLVA Archaeology Service, a government-affiliated organization in Belgium, on March 21. (See the video at the top of this article.)
Archaeologist Arne Verbrugge of Flanders, Belgium, told Fox News Digital that the excavation took place at a former ancient Roman regional center, called a vicus, in the village of Velzeke.
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Pictures show the dog’s mouth largely intact; several teeth were retained, as well as its entire skeleton. The creature was found under a stone floor that aided its preservation, Verbrugge said.
“Most of the bone we find in our region from the Roman period is already heavily decayed,” he said. “In certain contexts such as wells or ditches, the conservation is slightly better.”
He added, “Because the dog was buried under a foundation of highly calcareous sandstone, the remains are preserved quite well.”
Dogs were used in “various ritual practices” in Roman times, the archaeologist said – even considered the “guardian” of a deceased human’s grave. The animals were often ritually killed to guide a deceased individual’s journey to the afterlife.
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But it appears the recently found dog was actually sacrificed for a building, rather than a human – which is a rare find in Belgium.
“From [the Roman scholar] Varro’s work ‘De Re Rustica,’ it appears that dogs were sometimes used in rituals to purify land and houses,” Verbrugge said.
“For the building sacrifice of Velzeke, it is likely that before they wanted to erect the building, they first ‘purified’ the site.”
He said that “a relationship with ‘purification’ also appears from the practice of sacrificing dogs (and other animals) at the festival of the Lupercalia in honor of Faunus – associated with fertility and purification – as mentioned by Plutarch.”
It appears the recently found dog was actually sacrificed for a building.
The stone building that the dog was buried under likely had some important purpose, Verbrugge said.
This was the first building-related dog sacrifice found in Flanders, though similar instances have been discovered in France and the United Kingdom.
“It is possible that the building was larger, but the foundations are not well-preserved everywhere,” Verbrugge said.
“Stone foundations are not common in the Roman period for this region, and they testify to a certain status of the building. They are only found in villas and public buildings with military, administrative or religious functions.”
He also said, “The presence of a stone building indicates an important building on the site.”
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The remains of the dog, which were initially studied at the excavation site, will undergo further testing, though Verbrugge noted that the exact breed of the dog is lost to time.
“Once the remains are washed, the bones themselves will be examined again,” Verbrugge said.
“Perhaps certain things can still be deduced from this, such as cause of death, diseases, age, gender and the like. We cannot assign this animal to a specific ‘breed,’ as [creating] specific breeds is a fairly recent practice.”
Archaeologists also found a number of other artifacts at the site – including the bones of a different dog, the remains of a young pig, around 33 intact drinking cups and a bronze bowl, though Verbrugge characterized those discoveries as settlement waste or litter rather than ritual offerings.
“The finds testify to a rich culture at this place, based on, among other things, imported luxury pottery, jewelry and even some silver coins,” he said.
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“It is striking that the pits often also contain slag or fragments of oven walls, indicating artisanal activities in the immediate vicinity. At one point, ritual or religious activities were carried out on part of the excavation site.”